Lessons – The Anchor and the Compass | Conversations with Coaches | Boxer Media

Hello, everyone, welcome to another lessons minisode of the conversations with Coach’s podcast. This one is, it’s a favorite kind of exercise. For me, I’ve been thinking in metaphor and analogy for most of my life, for whatever reason, probably for normal human reasons, like we’re all storytellers, we make connections, yada, yada, yada. Anyway, I’ve had in my head, this seemingly paradoxical image, when it comes to coaching, I say, seemingly, I put Strapping, put a lecture sauce on that word seemingly, because as we as is true with most, most paradoxes, it’s not actually a paradox, or it just seems that way when looked at from a particular perspective. But really, it’s two ideas not in opposition to each other. But more in a dance more in concert with each other may explain this particular one I want to share with you thinking of it, I’m calling it the anchor and the compass. When I think about my think about coaching, and the purpose of the purposes that coaching serves, I think about anchoring, and what a compass does an anchor obviously, grounds you gives you a foundation hold you in place, maybe when the weather, you know the kind of extending the analogy to the full boat analogy, we’re an anchor or something, if you want to be still, you want to you know, some if there’s a storm coming, sometimes you, you know, just put the anchor down so you don’t get carried away by the tides, or by the waves. So there’s this anchoring that really good coaching can provide, it’s more I think of it as grounding.

Grounding makes a little bit more sense to me. But then there’s a whole electrical analogy. So I want to start mixing my metaphors too terribly. But there’s that anchoring grounding, a foundation that good coaching provides to people, and then there’s the compass, the guidance, the direction that good coaching also provides. So you know, both where to put your feet, and where to step next. And it’s, I feel like that’s something and again, you explain it. And of course, it makes sense, these ideas are in perfect concert, they are literally dancing together with you forward as you go forward in your life. But it’s really easy to, at least for me, I should probably speak only for myself, but it’s really easy for me to focus a little too much on one or the other, or think that only one can happen at the same like there’s some time in OPS, I have to ground my feet, but then you know, and then take separate time to look forward and kind of like plot my direction. These are things that work best in concert. And it’s something that good coaching, in my experience, provides in equal measure beautifully and anchoring and this the guidance of a compass. So that’s pretty much it. I really liked this that analogy, I really liked how it speaks to two of the two of the key attributes that good coaching provides. And I find it to be kind of inspiring to have, you know, that feeling of, you know, feet firmly planted, you know, I know where I stand, and also that that vision, that guidance to be like, and that’s where I’m going. And let’s get started.

You know, it’s very, it’s a very calm, but also like, energetic kind of momentum. I think I might be veering back into paradoxes, I attempt to describe it using my messy grasp of the English language. But anyway, I think you’re picking up what I’m putting down the anchor. And the compass is I titled the episodes, I thought that was like almost sounded like a nice, you know, a book of fables. But anyway, that’s my lesson for today. It’s something I’m going to be sitting on writing on journaling on for a while. It’s just like, it’s good. It’s good to think about where my feet are planted, what direction I’m going and how I can help other people figure that out too. And you help people figure that out as well. So thank you for listening to me ramble a little bit with a slightly strange analogy that I nonetheless think makes a lot of sense and I hope it came through in the signal. So thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you again soon.